Her hair was perfect, her mouth... no.
Huh.
"I don"t have a good feeling about these two," Tiff said, a thread of uncertainty weaving through the usually rock-hard confidence of her voice.
"You"re not losin" your nerve, are ya?" I asked, my eyes never wavering from the royal zombies.
She shook her head but her eyes were trained on the woman.
"Don"t worry about it. The dead are dead, right?" I said, winking.
Right.
Or so I"d thought.
The Dead Queen Clara ran to me. I glanced down at her with a question in my eyes. Releasing Tiff"s hand I grasped hers, they were cold... like ice. She opened her mouth to warn me.
Clara wished to tell the young Traveler that Queen Ada was not normal in life. She was evil. She was....
Her fear transferred to him like an unwanted gift.
Then Clara"s false mother opened her mouth, removing all the doubt for everyone.
Queen Ada looked around the sphere tunnel with profound pleasure. It was so reasonable to her that she would be back to her rightful position within her kingdom. She felt a perverse joy at the thought, until she saw the miserable excuse for a daughter, dressed in breeches, her hair in disarray, no crown, an embarra.s.sment as usual.
That is easily remedied, Ada mused. Clara had always been hard-headed. Ada would be pleased to inst.i.tute her special brand of discipline once again.
She moved toward Clara then paused, a feeling of being tethered swirled around her uncomfortably, like a line from one of the pungys which dredged the oysters from the muck of the lake. She jerked against the unseen restraint and could not escape. She looked at a boy of mayhap ten and seven years who stood beside Clara.
Realization of what he was and what she had become dawned on Ada.
She wished to break this untenable hold he had on her.
Queen Ada opened her mouth and hissed at the boy.
The boy that commanded death.
And in so doing commanded her.
Ada would not abide such a thing. She shambled forward rather gracefully, considering she was quite dead.
The dead Queen"s rotting gaze fell on the woman warrior of the Band and I listened as my zombie started to unravel before my eyes.
"Ah... Raymond"s wh.o.r.e," Ada ground out through lips that were a thin slash, the rot of her mouth garbling the words.
"Caleb... you got this, right?" Tiff asked, decidedly nervous. Bry came up to stand beside her.
"Who is this?" Bry asked, stabbing a finger in the direction of the grossest corpse he"d ever seen Caleb raise.
"Queen Ada," Clara said in a whisper.
Gary"s voice rose behind them, "So Hart?"
I swung my face away from the beauty queen, all in black, including her mouth. I smiled in the midst of the mess it was all becoming, I never could get the mouths right.
I met the scientist"s gaze and he commented, "Did Parker tell you the finer points of control?"
I just stared at him. Well h.e.l.l, let"s just talk while the mob closes in. The p.r.i.c.k.
"Not all zombies are alike my friend. If they were bonkers in real life, they"re not malleable in death." He shrugged, then, "Thought you"d like to know since this one"s looking pretty independent."
s.h.i.t. My gaze swung back to the dead royal, only a couple of meters away now. I was silently grateful I"d done a rush-job raising or Queenie here would have already been on them.
John shouted at Clara, that medieval speech thing kinda working out, "Was the queen mad while alive?"
I watched Clara"s gaze settle on Queen Ada and she grinned back, her tongue was gray, patches of black like evil polka dots covering the surface. Clara nodded in answer to John as Matthew pulled her behind him protectively.
"Yes, quite," Clara responded.
I looked at the dead royal just in front of her, his eyes glittering black holes without mercy, without reason. Tufts of blond hair were sticking straight up where it remained on the flesh of his skull. Those pitiless eyes bored into mine without connection but with plenty of resistance.
Effing spectacular, independent corpse number two. Just my luck.
Jonesy roused himself, sitting up on his knees, jerking out the darts. He looked around, his eyes taking in the crowd of filthy people with weapons, the Band, his friends, the pair of scientists and finally his eyes settled on the royals.
"Hey Caleb... is that your handiwork there?"
I nodded, stalling.
"They don"t look right, bro," Jonesy said, leveling a stare on the pair of royals.
No s.h.i.t.
We looked at Queen Ada, her advance slow and steady. Purposeful.
"What can be done, Traveler?"
I turned and stared into the only pair of violet eyes I"d ever seen and said, "Going to control her. If that doesn"t work, we"re gonna have to burn her."
Daniel translated, "Because of her madness while alive, she may be impossible to manipulate in her current state."
The woman of the Band frowned. "How do we... stop her?"
The huge male of the Band, the obvious leader, spoke for the first time, weapons laid bare in his hands; he had one eye on the crowd who inched closer, their stunned stupor breaking, "She is dead."
I nodded. "Fire maybe. If she can"t be controlled, it"ll take fire." Or maybe she needed to lose her head. I didn"t know. It"s not like I"d raised a bunch of crazy-a.s.s zombies before.
Maybe she needed some head-rolling action. Yeah, that"d be mighty permanent.
I looked beyond the royals and saw the rest of the dead, waiting behind them, their eyes trained on me patiently.
Waiting.
I turned to the Queen, the dead one. "Restrain the men Gary and Joe Zondorae," I commanded.
She flinched, trying to shake off my command even as I gave it and moved toward Clara again.
Okay.
I put intent and juice behind it, taking Tiff"s hand in mine, smoothly siphoning off her AFTD. "Do as I command!" I yelled into the absorbent atmosphere of the sphere, my force of will thrown in her direction like a sucker punch.
She bowed over at the waist, hissing as if in pain.
Straightening, she began to move toward Clara and the female warrior of the Band.
Jonesy said, "She"s gonna need the torch, dude."
Yeah... or something.
Then there was the Prince, my eyes shifting to him.
"What about him?" I said to the general crowd.
"He makes Ada look tame," Daniel said.
d.a.m.n.
The female warrior of the Band with eyes like pale violet, stepped forward. Raising her dagger, she wielded it with graceful speed, smoothly moving beside the corpse of Queen Ada, taking off her arm in a sliding pull. The limb jerked out of the shoulder with a sickening pop that echoed in the stillness of the tunnel. The bystanders were silent, watching the dead fill the tight confines of the tunnel, the air burdened with the fragrance of their decomposition.
Several people started coughing with what I liked to think of as the pre-barf gag. Pretty soon it wouldn"t be pre anymore. It"d be happening.
That"d keep "em busy.
The female warrior raised her blade again to take the next piece of the zombie queen off while I turned my attention to the sane zombies and saw the Prince casually backhand her before her blade connected.
She flew backwards, knocking her head against the wall of the interior of the sphere and slid down, dazed.
The leader of the Band growled deep in his throat and rushed Prince Frederic, his powerful muscles bunching and contracting as he plowed toward his intended target.
Alex piped in from a couple of meters away, "They"re strong!" he hollered in warning.
The male of the Band never hesitated; charging, he lowered his head like a mighty bull and surged toward the Prince, lifting him bodily as he made contact. The royal zombie grabbed the huge man and swung him around, releasing him as he used the momentum of the leader"s charge against him. The crown that"d been on the Prince"s head went spinning off onto the dirt floor, rolling until it hit the feet of the zombie horde that had poured through the ma.s.sive door. The ginormous body of the leader of the Band was hurtled in the same direction where the female lay, equally stunned. The leader trained his eyes on the remainder of the Band.
Zombie Prince shifted his gaze to Queen Clara. Madness flowed in the depths of his eyes like pond sc.u.m. I watched him come, much faster than the Queen had, who was working her way toward Clara at this very moment, minus a limb.
She was out-of-balance but tenacious as h.e.l.l. Like all zombies.
They were a motivated group.
I heard Clara whimper, the soft sound of terror seemingly igniting a match underneath the warrior who never left her side. As soon as he heard it he treated the zombie like three of the fragment instead of the one dead man it was, having seen the example of his Bandmate thrown like a toy. I watched him approach my out-of-control zombie with caution.
He moved in, his directive to protect the living queen in the face of anything never changing. Never faltering. I saw it on his face like a promise.
Against things which lived.
Or those that had died.
I had all I could do to contain the remaining dead. Taking the crazy zombies into account, I had to guess about who was bad... and who was good. I"d start with the science sib squad. Those two needed to be subdued.
Not a lot of deliberation needed for them.
Definitely in the bad tally side.
I flung that directive to a group of five corpses that had followed behind the royal wackos and they moved toward the Zondorae brothers like a wave of controlled menace, their smell preceding them.
I was used to it.
They weren"t. The brothers began gagging even as they were pegging the zombies with their useless pulse guns, covering their mouths with the other hand.
Jonesy chortled. "Hey guys, those aren"t gonna work... I"m just saying."
I was too busy coordinating my directives to notice Jonesy"s excellent command of sarcasm.
Although it was much appreciated.
I watched as the big guy, Matthew, started hacking at the Prince. He was taking chunks out of the guy.
I was all for it, I couldn"t control crazy, apparently. I didn"t have the heart to tell him it wouldn"t do much good. He"d keep coming.
Zombie resilience.
Three of the Band came from behind to help but the remaining dead were clumsy. They stumbled through the Band and the a.s.sembled crowd of losers from the other sphere and pushed people aside like bowling pins. After all, they were just following orders.
Subdue the crowd was about as simple a command as I"d ever given. But they were not a thinking bunch, stumbling around on the way to their goal.
Single-minded dudes.
But it had allowed a hole to open between where the corpses struggled into the three of the Band trying to aid Clara and opened just wide enough a gap for the dead Prince to latch onto Queen Clara.
Clara screamed as the dead hand of the Prince clamped onto her shoulder. I knew from experience it would be fierce and immobile. I could see her sway with the crushing pain of it.
I moved forward just as Matthew of the Band reached her.
I grabbed my zombie reflexively. "Release her!" I bellowed into its rotting face, the zombie inches taller than I.
It paused, meeting my eyes, the obsidian stare without light. "No, Master."